Nazi-era Berlin bunker transformed to luxury penthouse
Berlin: A five-storey Nazi-era bunker in the capital is being transformed into a luxury penthouse suite, complete with and gardens.
Equipped with three-foot-thick ceilings and walls and narrow window slits, the building has been acquired by a German businessman who plans to move in early next year.
Situated near the Friedrichstrasse, close to the famous Deutsches Theater, at the junction of Albrecht and Reinhardtstrasse, the bunker is one of more than 30 huge pieces of Nazi wartime architecture that still remain in Berlin.
It has been acquired by Christian Boros, a German and contemporary art collector who plans to move from Wuppertal, in western Germany, to Berlin with his family once on the penthouse, swimming pool and roof-top is completed early next year.
Boros is having the interior totally revamped, by floor, by a team of architects.
If his plans work out, he will move his extensive contemporary art collection - of more than 400 works - by artists Franz Ackermann, Dirk Bell, John Bock, Uwe Henneken, Sergej Jensen, Jonathan Meese, Manfred Pernice, Daniel Pflum, Katja Strunz and Thomas Zipp - into the premises in 2007.
The bunker, which offers magnificent across town view from its top, was built in 1942 as a refuge for 2,500 German railway workers at a time when massive wartime British and US bombing raids were taking place.
Each of its floors was divided into eight chambers with seating space for over 3,000 people, and 50 beds. By the end of the war, vast areas of Berlin had been destroyed and people were desperately seeking shelter. The Achillesstrasse bunker served as a refuge for some of the homeless in 1945-46.
The bunker became a heaving Techno-Disco haunt for a spell in the 1990s.
Many bunkers - both above and below surface were ordered built by Hitler during the war in a futile bid to reassure citizens their city was "indestructible". Following the Nazi defeat, the Allied forces blew up most of them.